The Vatican’s chief prosecutor said Pope Francis has given him free rein to investigate the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican resident.
The Vatican’s chief prosecutor said Pope Francis has given him free rein to investigate the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican resident.
While the dominant Vatican headline yesterday was Pope Francis’ triumphant return to form in the Palm Sunday liturgy after three days in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for bronchitis, other tidbits, mostly in Sunday’s Italian press, have sort of flown below the radar.
Despite being discharged from the hospital just a day earlier, Pope Francis presided over an outdoor Palm Sunday Mass in a brisk St. Peter’s Square, telling believers to embrace those who feel abandoned as Jesus did on the cross.
“I’m still alive,” Pope Francis joked to reporters who asked how he was doing as he left Rome’s Gemelli hospital April 1.
Pope Francis used his third day at Rome’s Gemelli hospital to visit children hospitalized in the oncology ward and to confer the sacrament of baptism on a tiny infant named Miguel Angel.
Indigenous Catholics, along with U.S. and Canadian bishops, are welcoming the Vatican’s repudiation of a legal and political doctrine by which European colonial powers and North American governments historically seized lands from Indigenous peoples — while stressing there is more work to be done in healing Catholic-Indigenous relations.
The Vatican announced on Friday, March 31, that after spending two days in the hospital, and given his most recent test results, Pope Francis is doing well and is expected to return to the Vatican in time for Holy Week.
The Vatican announced Thursday, March 30, that Pope Francis, after being admitted to the hospital the previous day for a respiratory infection, was showing signs of improvement and had spent the morning working and in prayer.
As Pope Francis continues to recover from his respiratory infection in Rome, his health issues and age have raised concern for many in the Catholic community.
Pope Francis’s whirlwind tour through Canada came to an end Saturday, and during the press conference aboard the papal plane he acknowledged that a genocide had been perpetrated against the Indigenous communities there.